Americas Quarterly: Why is China today so interested economically in Latin America? Li Jinzhang: After 30 years of reform and economic opening, China has scored remarkable achievements in economic and social development, and its connections with the rest of the world have become closer. China needs the world to achieve development, and the world needs China as a contributor to development and stability. Latin America is an important part of the developing world. In recent years, China and Latin America have drawn on their respective strengths and economic complementarity. The result has been rapid growth in economic cooperation and trade, and a vigorous boost to their respective economies. These synergies have brought real benefits to our peoples and contributed to global development and stability. Moreover, the potential for future growth in cooperation and trade is huge. We hope to achieve mutually-beneficial cooperation and common development through closer economic cooperation and trade with the region.
The 2010 U.S. Census results underlined not only the dramatic growth of the U.S. Hispanic population but its high mobility. In the last decade, data show that the number of Hispanics jumped by 43 percent—from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010—with this group accounting for over half of the total U.S. population increase. Latinos also continue to live in new destinations. Since 1990, the number of those living in the nine states with the historically highest concentrations of Hispanics shrank by 10 percentage points to a total of 76 percent. The rise of the Hispanic population, together with an immigrant population estimated at 38.5 million (of which more than half are from Latin America), continues to spark a variety of public policy and private-sector responses. The most worrisome has been the explosion of anti-immigrant bills in state legislatures, which claim to be reacting to the absence of nationwide comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) and lack of enforcement.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Latin American Left experienced an extraordinary revival, especially in South America. By 2009, eight South American countries and two Central American nations had elected left-wing governments. Is this revival a harbinger of a progressive renaissance or a throwback to failed experiments? Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings attempts to answer this question by analyzing the extent to which these governments have improved the livelihoods of their citizens. The seven essays that make up the volume, written by distinguished U.S. and Brazil-based scholars, provide a sharp, scholarly comparison of the outcomes achieved by governments of the moderate left and what coeditor Kurt Weyland of the University of Texas at Austin calls the “contestatory” or more radical left, in an introduction that lays out the theoretical framework. This book, which was also edited by Raúl L. Madrid and Wendy Hunter of the University of Texas, fills a critical gap in the burgeoning literature on the subject.
A common assumption is that the Cuban economic elite was universally opposed to the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro from the time it took power in January 1959. But The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon shows otherwise. In his book, John Paul Rathbone, the Latin America editor at the Financial Times, paints a more nuanced picture of the Cuban bourgeoisie and, in particular, of Julio Lobo (1898–1983)— the great Cuban sugar tycoon of the first half of the twentieth century. Reading like an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel with scenes reminiscent of an Elia Kazan film, the book paints vivid descriptions of Lobo's life and Cuba in general with action on every page.
The modern tragic political figure is not just endemic to Latin America. The ignominious fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—once a war hero to his countrymen—is the latest proof of this. But in her book, La Rebelión de los Náufragos (The Revolt of the Castaways), Venezuelan journalist Mirtha Rivero takes us back to the tragic story of a man who was once one of Latin America's most promising leaders, and who fell from power (like his modern counterparts) from a combination of pride and the failure to understand the yearnings of his compatriots. Carlos Andrés Pérez, re-elected in 1989 to a second term as Venezuela's president, embodied one of Latin America's first modern political tragedies. He was a democrat who was confident that his country (along with much of his region) had conquered its ghosts and was finally ready for governance by first-world standards such as fair elections, a competitive market-based economy and political parties focused more on national interests than on self-preservation.
José Manuel Zelaya, former president of Honduras, returned to his country in May after the coup that ousted him in 2009. Since coming back, he has reentered politics and this has raised concerns that he may once again try and change the constitution. This could have severe implications for the operating environment in Honduras.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Governance
Former colonial countries and ethnically and/or religiously diverse societies have long faced the challenge of accommodating distinct and largely conflictive normative orders within a single polity.1 In such contexts of legal pluralism, particular social groups have often, besides state law, followed their own law-like principles, rules, and procedures, which typically originate from distinct sources of legitimacy such as tradition or religion, cultural values and forms of organization (Griffiths 1986; Sousa Santos 1987; Merry 1988; Benda-Beckmann 2002).
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Ethnic Conflict, and Law
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
Este artículo expone una investigación en la que se propuso calcular la percepción de gobernabilidad democrática, otorgándole una alta significa - tividad para evaluar los cambios de la democracia en México. La medición combina la satisfacción de los ciudadanos con el desempeño de las insti - tuciones, sus gobernantes y ellos mismos (los ciudadanos) como actores activos para mejorar la democracia mexicana. A tal efecto, se propuso que el entrevistado hiciera una evaluación de la situación socioeconómica de su entorno, a fin de comprender su percepción sobre la efectividad del gobierno en lograr éxitos económicos.
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
Crises are unexpected events that trigger and enable change in the policy regime. To analyze how the policy paradigm changes, this paper analyzes three different crises: Argentina in 2000-2003, Spain in 2008-2011, and Mexico in 1994-1996. The question of the article is: How does crisis trigger change in the policy regime? To answer, is shown that crisis destroy the preexisting government's coalitions, enable the formation of new coalitions that face the crisis that are also substituted after the crisis for a new coalition to institutionalize the new policy paradigm.